Nighisty Ghezae, Director
We were recently requested to write a note on IFS’s impact for one of our funding partners. This enabled us to delve deeply into our records to analyse, for example, numbers of publications resulting from the IFS grant (on average three per grantee). It also offered a chance to assess how we are monitoring and evaluating the ultimate use of the research funded by IFS. We felt that the note on impact should in some way also represent IFS’s global constituency, so the Secretariat reached out to prominent IFS alumni, including the Chairs of IFS Alumni Associations in Benin, Ghana, Kenya and Nigeria, asking them to write a paragraph about IFS’s impact.
In summary, they wrote about patents, fellowships, other grants and awards (indeed, there are now two annual awards for members of the Nigerian Young Academy – one for women – named after an IFS alumnus). Some are involved with the private sector in innovations research, others as government representatives to international bodies, on other institutions’ boards, and in senior government and academic positions. The IFS grants enhanced respondents’ scientific capacities along with their administrative abilities, their mentoring of postgraduate students, and the provision of equipment and facilities still in use. Finally, it should be noted that IFS alumni from previously IFS-eligible countries (such as Thailand) are still at home helping their own countries and also other neighboring countries that are still IFS-eligible (Read IFS: A Model Organization For Nurturing Young Scientists In Developing Economies).
All of these colleagues, their careers and their continuing engagement with IFS show how early career support is having long-term impacts. In their own words:
With thanks
Nighisty Ghezae
Director